Pompeo cancels his last trip to Europe after unprecedented snub
According to EURACTIV, Outgoing US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cancelled his Europe trip at the last minute on Tuesday (12 January) after top EU officials and Luxembourg’s foreign minister declined to meet him, according to European diplomats and other people familiar with the matter.
Pompeo, a close ally of US President Donald Trump, had sought to visit Luxembourg before meeting EU leaders and the bloc’s top diplomat in Brussels, three people close to the planning told Reuters.
The Luxembourg leg of the trip was scrapped, one diplomatic source said after officials there showed reluctance to grant him appointments, while the Brussels leg was still on until the last minute.
The snub of such a high-ranking US representative is unprecedented in the history of transatlantic relations.
A Luxembourgish official told AFP on condition of anonymity that the visit was cancelled in protest at comments by Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn slamming Trump as a “criminal” over the attack by his supporters on the Capitol last week.
Asselborn described Trump to RTL Radio as a “political pyromaniac who must be brought before a court”.
“He has ignored his own Constitution, court decisions and of course the election results,” Asselborn had said. The Luxembougish foreign minister has a reputation for straight-talking.
In a refurbished schedule of his trip, Pompeo was set to meet with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Belgian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister Sophie Wilmès, the State Department said in a statement on Monday (11 January).
However, Pompeo’s final Brussels schedule was not going to involve any meetings with the EU or any public events at NATO.
An EU spokesperson confirmed to EURACTIV that there had been no intention to schedule meetings with neither European Council President Charles Michel, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen nor EU’s chief diplomat Joseph Borrell. However, the Commission didn’t say is such meetings had been requested by the US side.
The trip would have come in the aftermath of the US Capitol storming last Wednesday by Trump supporters forcing lawmakers who were certifying Democratic President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory into hiding. The harrowing assault that left five dead.
Stoltenberg had described the scenes in Washington “shocking” and called for the outcome of the election to be respected, while many other European leaders including those of top US allies such as the UK expressed shock at the attack on the heart of American democracy.
